The best option is to send an e-mail to the Research Director/Project Manager with a CC to the srard@njit.edu . We recommend using your Director/Research Manager assigned to your college rather than emailing a specific staff member. This will allow us to provide coverage, if necessary, when staff are not readily available. That being said, SRA is also happy to take your phone calls and encourages you to call your representative if that is your preferred method of communication. A list of SRA contacts is located at our web site http://www.njit.edu/research/

Deadlines are absolute and proposals received after a deadline are not accepted. For those competitions with target dates, there is no need to inform the Program Director if a proposal will be a week or two late.

If the delay will be significantly more, please contact to make certain it can still be included in the pending review cycle. For some NSF competitions, requests may be submitted at any time

Any federal agency recognizes that innovative research often lies at or between traditional disciplinary boundaries and encourages interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research.

A potential applicant should contact a relevant program Director and discuss their particular project. For administrative reasons a proposal may be submitted to only one Program. However it can be jointly evaluated and funded by several. This is a common practice in archaeology and projects do not slip between the cracks. Experience indicates that review by multiple Programs may best be viewed as multiple opportunities for support and not as double jeopardy.

There are several mechanisms to provide support to researchers at multiple institutions and to accomplish this within the framework of a single project.

These include subcontracts, collaborative awards and a central plan of administration by a single institution. Although one needs to consider carefully which mechanism is most appropriate in a specific case, none are cumbersome and all are regularly employed.

Applicants should call the Program Director to discuss the details, advantages and disadvantages of each alternative.

In our experience, having another person put your ideas into words is not effective, is not as successful, is totally transparent to the reviewer, and can lead to confusion. You are the best person to express your ideas.

SRA is committed to facilitating the pre-award process for scholarly research. The following information will help you understand how SRA is structured

SRA can assist you with properly understanding the Request For Proposal (RFP). This may include blocking off long periods of time to sit with you to properly guide you to the different requirements, gather information for you, format the proposal so that it looks good, and generally help you in any way with the compliance of the whole proposal package.

Time can be a very real constraint. Keep in mind that some proposals will need specific certifications that they are common; therefore they will require more time.

1 month in advance (as early as possible) send the SRA a message of intent to apply to srard@njit.edu

This should include the request for proposal identification number (NSF, NIH) or the grant proposal guidelines document. At minimum, a link to the documents should be provided.

2 weeks before the due date the budget should be finalized and the approval proposal process should be initiated. This includes the Department approval and conflict of interest forms with the PI’s and Department Chair’s signature, the detailed budget and justification, proposal title, and preliminary specific aims (NIH), proposal summary (NSF), or contract scope of work (SOW).

72 hours prior to submission the SRA will initiate a proposal review and check for submission errors. For this to occur, all portions of the proposal should be completed and ready for submission with the exception of the proposal narrative. Only a draft of the proposal is needed at this point as a place holder for error checking.

It is strongly recommended that proposal budgets prioritize student support. Grants and contracts generally include in their personnel budgets one or more of the following items: support for PhD student(s), faculty summer salary, agency-supported academic-year release time, post-doctoral fellow support, support staff, masters and undergraduate student support.

Small or creative projects and/or consulting contracts, usually involving industry, state or private agency funding, will be treated differently.

A faculty member who is seeking such funds should clearly explain the scope of the project and its funding source to the Chair to get his/her approval prior to finalizing such plans. As with major/multi-year research projects, the grant and contract approval process will also involve the Chairs and Deans.

The involvement of students in such projects can be compensated on an hourly basis at a rate consistent with federal work-study guidelines. All agreements for these types of projects must be reviewed and approved by the SRA office

When an agency requires a match to the proposed budget, the PI of the proposal will contact the SRA to discuss the inclusion of the appropriate matching to meet the scope of work proposed. All agreements on matching must be communicated to the Department Chair and Dean’s office on the Department Approval Forms.